Gingrich tangles with Pelosi over ethics info

NEW YORK -- Newt Gingrich shot back at House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi today, after Pelosi threatened to reveal details of the ethics investigation into the former House Speaker almost 13 years ago.

“I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for what I regard as an early Christmas gift,” Gingrich said during a press conference at Manhattan’s Union League Club Monday afternoon.

“If she’s saying that she’s going to use material that she developed while she was on the ethics committee,” Gingrich added, “that is a fundamental violation of the rules of the House, and I would hope that members would immediately file charges against her the second she does it.”

The remark brought a quick response over Twitter from Nancy Pelosi’s staff.

“[Pelosi] was clearly referring to the extensive amount of information that is in the public record,” wrote her spokesman, Drew Hammill.

The back-and-forth began earlier today when the left-leaning website Talking Points Memo published an interview with Pelosi, in which she said, “One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich.”

The blog post was headlined, “Democrats Gleeful At Prospect of Running Against Gingrich.”

“I know a lot about him,” Pelosi told TPM. “I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”

The ethics investigation resulted in sanctions against Gingrich, and a fine.

Gingrich resigned as Speaker of the House in 1999. Pelosi later served as House Speaker, from 2007 until January, 2011.

The two appeared in a 2008 video encouraging action on global warming –- a move that has invited attacks from Gingrich’s opponents in the GOP field.

“We don’t always see eye-to-eye, do we Newt?” Pelosi said in the video.